The Agents #3
The Agents #3 is the midpoint chapter of a compact six-issue Image Comics run that represents one of the more earnest attempts in early-2000s American comics to fuse a manga-influenced visual style with a loving parody of 1960s espionage entertainment — think Connery-era Bond, Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds, and The Green Hornet all colliding in a single fictional universe. As a Ben Dunn project, it sits at the intersection of his long-running influence on American manga — he founded Antarctic Press in 1984 and helped define the genre stateside — and his later departure from that company in 2003, making The Agents series a pivot-point work in his creative biography. The series as a whole is also notable for containing (in its sixth and final issue) one of the earliest preview appearances of The Walking Dead, giving the run an unexpected footnote in comics history. Issue #3 itself is a mid-arc chapter in a niche, affectionately crafted parody series, and its historical weight derives primarily from its place in that broader context rather than from any singular debut or landmark moment within the issue.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The Agents was co-created by writer Kevin Gunstone and artist/creator Ben Dunn, who handled pencils, inks, colors (in greytone), and lettering on the series virtually single-handedly. Dunn — widely known in collector circles as 'The Godfather of American Manga' — had founded Antarctic Press in 1984 and built a career blending American superhero sensibilities with Japanese manga aesthetics; he sold Antarctic Press in 2003 to launch his own development company, Sentai Studios, making The Agents one of his first major projects outside his longtime imprint. The six-issue Image run from April through September 2003 was subsequently collected by Antarctic Press in late 2004 as The Agents Pocket Manga, an irony given Dunn's departure from that publisher.
Trivia · 8 facts
- The Agents #3 was published by Image Comics with a cover date of July 2003, the third of six issues in the series (April–September 2003).
- The series was co-created by writer Kevin Gunstone and artist Ben Dunn, with Dunn serving as penciler, inker, colorist (greytone), and letterer across the run.
- Ben Dunn is widely credited as a foundational figure in American manga, having founded Antarctic Press in 1984 — the publisher that eventually collected the series in 2004 as The Agents Pocket Manga.
- The series is a satire-parody of 1960s spy fiction, featuring characters that riff on James Bond (Nigel Cord), Lady Penelope (Lady Pippa), Kato (Haiku), the Thunderbirds (Tomahawks), and the Green Hornet (Red Wasp), set in a world rebuilt after a nuclear catastrophe.
- The fictional organization central to the series is called The Agency — a British-led global protectorate formed in the aftermath of simultaneous nuclear strikes on Washington D.C. and Moscow thirty years prior.
- Cover artwork first appearing on the back cover of issue #3 was recycled and reprinted in the series' sixth and final issue, per the Grand Comics Database.
- The Agents #6 — not #3 — holds the series' most widely noted key-issue distinction: it contains a five-page preview of The Walking Dead, one of the earliest appearances of that property in print.
- The entire six-issue Image Comics run was later reprinted in collected form as The Agents Pocket Manga (Antarctic Press, December 2004).
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↩ Reprints The Agents #2 (2003)
Reprinted in The Agents #1 (2004)
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